Wednesday, September 2, 2009

There were a couple more iPhone comics announcement in our inbox this morning, bringing the approximate number of iPhone related comics announcements this week to 5,684 or so. Rather than run them all we’ll refer you to ICv2’s brief overview of the field which notes that the number of companies offering comics on iPhones has more than doubled in the past two months. And

It’s been 60 days since we updated our directory of mobile comics content (primarily for the iPhone, see “Mobile Comics Directory—Update #4”), and the number of titles available (most of which include multiple issues) has gone from 105 to 207 in that time.

Digital comics, in their present state, are require too much compromise. The market is fragmented, with some being device specific (iPhone and a few Kindle titles) or locked to the publisher’s site (like all of VIZ or Marvel’s offerings). Offerings are still slim, with poor representation of the classics (Sandman, Maus, Bone, Blankets, anything Tezuka, and too many others to list). And as for offering an alternative to buying print comics, digital isn’t even close. At this point, it’s hard to even fathom today’s digital offerings making up a proper “collection.”

Among Forbes’ other observations — webcomics and manga are thus far very underserved on the iPhone.